There are standbys in content posting methodology, such as titles like this: 5 Ways Top Marketers are Driving Social Media ROI.
Drilling down, the message in the recent posting in Social Media Today by Jay Shemenski comes down to planning and measuring — setting goals, ensuring they align with business objectives, testing and recording the results.
These concepts are both decidedly simple and difficult to implement, especially in the architectural, engineering and construction community, where (even for the simplest residential project), the numbers are small and the time to build a useful “conversion” sample size would be huge, at least if you want to do things with statistical probability in mind.
So, I’ll turn the argument around a bit and suggest that the best approach in the AEC space is to turn the focus from enhancing the return to minimizing the investment — and in doing that, to achieve the highest level of value/reward for what you do within that framework.
Here are my three suggestions, then.
- If you have to pay for marketing (like advertising, paid search, SEO, or any consulting services), insist on hard results before you start. Undoubtedly the services/agencies will be reluctant, but putting the measure-to-success on the side of the people/organizations seeking your money will at least help you to sort out the hype from the substance in promises they make (and be sure to set a budget and stick to it in spending your money.)
- It never hurts to post good news stories about your clients, employees, and your own business. Not “blow your horn” promotional stories; but tales of how you solved problems, helped out, or contributed.
- Finally, you can certainly combine resources. A single blog post can easily be transferred to Facebook, Twitter, Houzz, or LinkedIn feeds; a comprehensive speech or white paper can be multi-purposed across several media. Use these tools.
